Broadly, a coating instrument is used to apply a layer of material onto a substrate. The coating instrument may be, for example, a pen for coating paper with ink, or a pencil for coating paper with graphite, or medical instrument for coating an area of a patient's skin with a medication. A disadvantage of traditional coating instruments is that many are not easily grasped by a user when the instrument is lying on a horizontal surface. This is especially true for users that are handicapped or are required to wear surgical gloves or the like with both user-types having impaired dexterity preventing easy manipulation (e.g. picking up) of the instrument in its horizontal resting position.